N: Day 2: Training and Shopping!

Work AND play!  This was a great day.  We started the day with training.  We did some phonetic review and went over basics of teaching English to native Chinese speakers.  It went pretty quickly, so that was nice.  All of us went to Lukang in the afternoon to walk around the little street markets.  It was SO much fun!  The first thing we found was a fun place to take pictures. (Leave it to Kaitlyn to find the best photoshoot places:))  It was a space between two buildings with old bricks and bright blue window frames.  We had fun:)

On the way to Lukang... :)

As we all walked into this little alley, there was a lady selling something, and yelling enthusiastically to people passing.  She would yell, "Happy New Year!" every few sentences.  When we all started walking down the way, she said, "OHH!" She counted us with her finger, "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9!  9 Americans! Happy New Year!!" We all smiled at her and kept walking on down.

The next thing we found was ice cream!! Yeah!!  ...By the time we decided we didn't quite have an appetite for it anymore, it was too late.  An old lady asked which flavor we wanted.  We looked up to a face decorated with a giant chin mole and hair that should never grow like it did on her face... Hahahahaaaaa Oh, she was so elderly and nice, we just bought the ice cream. 

One of the little alleys

The main road

I love it!

It was fun looking at all the little places selling trinkets, food, clothes, little handmade things, art, and random stuff I have never seen before.  There was a stand with a bunch of umbrellas and we decided to look at them, seeing as we were in Taiwan with no umbrellas, rain coats, boots, or pretty much anything waterproof. A cute little old man came over and noticed we were looking at some really pretty, long umbrellas.  He took it off the stand and demonstrated how it opens (with a little button!).  I asked, "duo shao?" (how much?) He said, "yi bai kuai." (100 kuai).  That's not bad, like $3.50, I told Kaitlyn.  And they looked pretty nice!  So we got one for each of us.  (Good thing too, because it started raining when we got home and almost all day Sunday!)

Definitely the highlight buy of this little trip would be the purses we bought.  Kaitlyn forgot to bring a wallet or a purse, so this was a necessary buy for her!  We went into a store that was PINK. Pink everything and purses purses purses!  It was the most girly store I have ever been into next to Justice.  It was great, though!  I, not being a huge purse fan myself, had a lovely time looking at everything.  They were all really nice, expensive-looking, good quality, but super cheap!  I think I got mine for the equivalent of 5 US dollars and Kaitlyn got hers, essentially a backpack that doubles as a purse, for 10.  We were pretty excited to say the least :)

So, remember the lady in the little alley yelling Happy New Year?  Well as we passed again, she was yelling again in our direction; I guessed it was her usual advertising, so when she had made eye contact with me, I smiled and said, "bu yao, xiexie!" (I don't want anything, thank you!).  Her eyes lit up and she smiled and yelled something to me in Chinese.  I had NO idea what she said.  No idea.  She repeated herself.  I heard the word, "yu" (language) and I think, "guo" (country), but she spoke so fast and with such a weird accent, I had NO idea what she was saying!  As second or two later, a lady walking past translated, "do you speak Chinese?" I turned back to the lady.  "Oh!  Yi dian dian." (a little).  She smiled at me and yelled, "Happy New Year!" haha sooo awkward...  It just goes to show how different it is to hear what you learned in America versus the native speakers.  I'm pretty sure I learned every way possible someone could ask me if I speak Chinese, but no! I'm totally clueless here sometimes!

We went from Lukang to the night market down the street in Feng Yuan.  It was already dark and we were all kind of hungry and tired, so we only went there to get bread and fruit, but it was fun to walk through and see things!  There were games, food, clothes (surprisingly there were more places selling women's underwear than anything else), shoes, candy, trinkets, you name it.  We came to a place that sold all kinds of breads!  So what you do is you pick up a tray and a pair of tongs and fill up your tray, then give it to the dude and he packs it all up for you and puts it in a bag.  After that, we went over to the fruit lady.  She has water apples and guava (which I bought), and some other fruits cut up and put in little plastic boxes.  I think I've had both of those fruits before, because I was having weird flashbacks when I ate them...  They aren't my favorite, but they were still really fresh!  (What IS my favorite is passion fruit. Oh, yum!  One of the teachers, Erin, let me try some.  You cut one open and it's like a bowl of yellow, goopy stuff with seeds. But it's the sweetest tasting fruit!  It has the most delicious flavor and the seeds are good too.)  Another thing worth documenting is that I smelled chou dofu (stinky tofu), actually knowing that it was chou dofu in the night market.  At first, I just thought that sometimes it just smelled really gross for no reason!  But no!  There IS a reason... chou dofu.  They were selling it at the night market.  One day I will try it!  Just... not today.  So, that was the night market!